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Rocketship
“A Certain Smile, A Certain Sadness” 30th Anniversary Re-issue and West Coast Tour
Some of the best records are those that transcend the usual parameters of music to create worlds of their own. When it’s clear that what you’re listening to isn’t just a collection of that year’s songs, but a deeply thought-out, architected space where ideas clash, converse, interlock; these are the albums that end up lasting well beyond their era, changing with us, and revealing new surprises every time we return to them. One of the clearest examples of an album that crafts a strange and beautiful world not quite like any other is Rocketship’s 1996 full-length debut A Certain Smile, A Certain Sadness. Even upon arrival, this was an experience unto itself, and 30 years later, these eight songs of bittersweet bliss still feel new. Slumberland is delighted to release a 30th Anniversary edition of this instant classic, making it readily available on vinyl and CD once again after years of unavailability and collector demand.
Rocketship came into focus in the early ‘90s, incubating through a series of demos and early 7”s into their fully-realized album. The continuum of sounds that made up A Certain Smile, A Certain Sadness were recorded at home by bandleader and vocalist/songwriter Dusty Reske with help from members of the early lineup. While they sometimes melt into one another, each of the eight songs goes somewhere a little different. The bright, jangling guitars, zooming tempo, and co-ed vocals of brilliant opener “I Love You Like the Way That I Used to Do” blurs mod energy into something dreamier, practically blueprinting the next decade of indie pop in the process. The atmospheric weather patterns of “Heather, Tell Me Why” drift between melancholic acoustic guitars and gusts of overwhelming noise. It’s baroque pop from another solar system, but it doesn’t feel jarring when the bass-forward slow down of “Let’s Go Away” follows, or bounding fits of fuzzy enthusiasm like “Carrie Cooksey” enter the picture. The songs cautiously orbit each other, all glued together by that interplanetary all-tube M2 Hammond organ, loud in the mix. This was an album of unrepentantly vulnerable melodies, unusual seventh chords, lingering ambient interludes, and soft sentiments in a time when unfriendly, self-conscious punk rock was the order of the day. Even in the considerably gentler environs of the U.S. indie pop scene of the time, these were bold moves.
Returning to A Certain Smile, A Certain Sadness with fresh ears, it becomes more obvious how quietly influential the album was. After several different waves of shoegaze revivalism, grunge distillation, and new bands perfecting the ‘90s slacker pop aesthetic yet again, elements of Rocketship’s intricate creative world have begun to surface in the sounds of subsequent generations. Indeed, most examples of musically intricate, thoughtfully constructed, and emotionally unafraid indie pop of the last several decades are directly descended from Rocketship. Listening to a work so inspired, it’s no surprise that it ended up being extremely inspiring.
While the 30th anniversary of A Certain Smile, A Certain Sadness is the ostensible impetus for this reissue, what’s really being celebrated here is the album’s timelessness. Now, as it was then, this music is mystifying and comforting in ways that shouldn’t co-exist, and the softly glowing private world Rocketship built when they made this album is still as fascinating a place to get lost in as ever.
On their sophomore album "Fairweather Friend," Bay Area indie pop group The Umbrellas grows more sonically sophisticated and emotionally complex without losing any of the eruptive joy that has characterized their sound up until now. The band keeps their baseline of high energy melodic pop with notes cribbed from some of the best and most intentionally obscured acts of the genre, but also expands beyond it with more involved arrangements, increasingly direct lyrical themes, and songs that explore ideas both new to the group and well outside of standard indie templates. It's a collection of ten songs that somehow manage to convey fun, excitement, and expectant hopefulness, but at the same time give equal space to feelings of discouragement and world-weary ennui. It's music that's by no means simple on any level, and represents a bold evolution for the band.
Multiple factors play into the changes that have come about following The Umbrellas' early tracks and their self-titled debut album, which was released on Slumberland in 2021. Where the band's first songs had a charming naivety, a few years of steady touring and locking in together on stage have boosted both the confidence and the straightforward[a][b][c] lyricism of the new songs. "Toe the Line" has a blasting, almost punk tempo, but The Umbrellas' inherent sweetness can't help but come through in the form of floating backing vocal harmonies and bouncy quasi-surf guitar leads. This newfound boldness teeters on the edge of aggression in moments like this, and leans more towards internal reflections on frustration and disappointment on tracks like the Verlaines-steeped "When You Find Out." Fairweather Friend was written with live drums, where earlier material was written (and sometimes recorded) with rudimentary drum machine rhythms. This compositional change plays into the more urgent, organic feel of the album as well. While the band's blue-skies jangle is still intact, the edges are a little sharper, and the flow takes new directions; sometimes slowing down contemplatively or wandering down a detour into new territory. This shows up in the moody string arrangements of acid-burned ballad "Say What You Mean" and the disheartened sighing of "Echoes," a song that perfectly captures the feeling of dreams denied. The band worked on the album in a focused span between November of 2022 and April of 2023, allowing themselves to sink into the ideas and refine them over time. A far cry from the D.I.Y. bluster of rushed studio time they were limited to on earlier recordings.
Heavy lyrical themes surface in many of the songs, but "Fairweather Friend" isn't a heavy sounding (or feeling) record. Even when singing about departed loved ones, romantic disillusionment, or the burden of societal expectations, unshakeable melodies are at the forefront of everything, and the band's powerfully fizzy pop chemistry has never been more synched-up. There are subtle nods to a mixtape's worth of golden era indie-pop inspirations throughout the album, and attentive listeners might hear refractions of everything from the fuzzy rush of Heavenly or Talulah Gosh to the charged dreaminess of Close Lobsters to the unassuming brilliance of any number of Sarah Records bands. Even with a discerning style informed by obscure heroes of the past, The Umbrellas sound more like themselves than ever before, and the way the band navigates difficult feelings is decidedly rooted in the now. "Fairweather Friend" is tougher and more aware without being jaded, and it's apparent that the band trusts their listeners enough to put these changes on full display. The songs enhance everything that made The Umbrellas so thrilling when they first emerged, and give us brand new reasons to fall in love all over again.
Chime School’s Andy Pastalaniec does it all for the love. As the drummer for dreamy pop bands like Flowertown, Seablite, and very occasionally The Reds, Pinks & Purples, the San Franciscan musician brings a beaming energy to everything he lays his hands on. However, while Pastalaniec’s work as a drummer has a graceful touch, it’s his jangle-pop solo project that takes the cake.
Beginning “almost as a dare” from his partner—who gifted Pastalaniec a cassette 4-track Portastudio to encourage him to step out from behind the kit—Chime School channels the “formative jangle” of his favorite 1980s and ’90s indie-pop bands. Allmusic described Chime School’s 2021 self-titled debut as “a lovely combination of being wrapped up tight in a nostalgic hug, and being slapped awake by immense hooks that have the same effect as about seven cups of coffee.”
As Chime School’s sole songwriter, performer, and producer, Pastalaniec is well aware of the manic sound of his debut. “I was trying to jampack decades of pop fandom into one album, stuffing in as many little things as I could,” he laughs. “That was the first record where I wrote, played, and recorded everything myself, so there was a huge learning curve to it.”
Chime School’s sophomore effort, The Boy Who Ran The Paisley Hotel, is an assured continuation, meticulously weaving lyrical (and musical) references into a symphony to pop songcraft itself. Like the Feelies’ change of pace from Crazy Rhythms to The Good Earth, Pastalaniec recentered himself by slowing down. “I took a step back and chose a more condensed palette,” he explains. “That brought me a bit closer to the sonic vision I had from the beginning.”
On top of Chime School’s primary inspirations, such as Razorcuts and Sonic Flower Groove era Primal Scream, The Paisley Hotel layers 12-string acoustic guitars à la The Go-Betweens’ “Head Full of Steam” over synthetic drum beats in the style of The Field Mice. If that sounds like getting down into the weeds, that’s the whole point. Specificity of sounds and meticulous attention to detail are the names of the game for Pastalaniec, who loves vintage film cameras as much as he does obscure seven-inches from Sarah Records.
Despite the cheekiness of naming your album’s first song “The End,” this melancholy, slow-paced jangler is a perfect entrypoint to The Paisley Hotel. Originally titled “Start Again (Again),” as a tribute to the opener from Teenage Fanclub’s 1997 album Songs from Northern Britain, Pastalaniec stresses the lyrics are not autobiographical. “Just like anyone making a mixtape, I wanted the album to start off with a certain hum,” he says, “and raise things up from there.”
“Wandering Song” is about the energy we expend distracting ourselves from crises unfolding around the world; how we tend to turn inwards when our only chance to survive them is through collective organizing. After finishing the album, Pastalaniec read Naomi Klein’s latest book, Doppelganger. Once again, he found his thoughts echoed in a formative influence—this time on his politics.
“In Naomi Klein’s chapter about social media and our digital golems, she articulates some of what I was trying to get at far better than I could,” says Pastalaniec. When he repeats the mantra-like lyrics “nothing’s wrong / when you’re moving too slow,” this sounds like a teachable moment for all of us. Yet Pastalaniec is patient and compassionate, welcoming everyone to change with chiming pop.
“Give Your Heart Away” is the album’s pumping musical ticker, contracting and dilating with squelchy keys, wordless ba-da-das, and guitar solos that curlicue like a pig’s tail. Lyrically, its themes of looking back to memories of the past toy with the terminology of his second passion.
“Photography is another medium that informs what I do musically,” Pastalaniec says. “The song is ‘framed’ by an out-of-time intro and outro; there’s a lyric about a camera lens opening to another time and place; it’s meant to capture a distant moment in time. Perhaps that moment was in one’s younger years, when you perhaps spent a bit too much directionless time out and about in the bars at night…”
“The lyrics are not necessarily autobiographical—I’ve never had bleached hair—but I think it’s something that a lot of us can relate to,” he laughs.
- Jesse Locke
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